Yade Yasemin Önder

The Werners live in a box. They have for the past 16 years. There isn’t much room. Mrs. Werner is strict. She tells them when it is day, when night. And she tells them what to do, and what not to do. She calls her husband - Werner - Wernerlein. She says that the bread with marmalade is to be eaten. Every day. Marille, bittersweet. In a case of contradiction, she hits. That is effective. Only when Mr. Werner becomes uneasy, when he wants to go outside, does she unbutton her blouse—so that Mr. Werner can take out his urges on her and in the carton. So that order can reign again. But this order tips one day, when Rosalie is found lying on the ground. The daughter, who they believed to be dead, brings with her the Werners’ dreadful memories. Memories about what happened when Rosalie disappeared. And, above all, about how things were when Werner still called the shots.

Yade Önder's surreal portrayal of a couple living in a cardboard box and their traumatized daughter tells poetically and oppressively of brutality experienced in an intertwined coexistence. The carton serves as a hermetic seal from the outside world, a self-imposed punishment which they previously executed on their own child. And which cannot offer salvation from the past. With Kartonage, this young author has made a most impressive debut, in which past and present oppose each other on the pages of the script. And what is in between can’t mediate between them anymore.